_September 23rd._--At The Grove from Saturday to Monday; nobody there but Reeve; nothing very particular. Clarendon said Prussia was very anxious to interpose to renew negotiations, but they would not hear of her interference, and if anything was done it could only be by Austria. He showed me a paper sent by Hudson with an account, very brief, of the state of Italy, which is in fermentation though not in open disturbance. The Sicilian malcontents sent to the King of Sardinia an offer of their crown for one of his sons. He replied, 'You have need of a man, and a boy will be of no use to you.' This they took for a refusal, and they are now thinking of a Coburg; in no case will they have a Murat. I forget what the Neapolitan Liberals want, but I doubt if the country will have either the courage or the power to emancipate itself. GENERAL CHARLES WINDHAM. _September 28th._--No fresh news, but a letter from Charles Windham (the hero of the Redan), in which he gives an account of that affair which corresponds very closely with the report of Russell, the 'Times' Commissioner. He gives a poor character of the generals in the Crimea, and says the troops, except some of the old soldiers, behaved by no means well. The whole thing seems to have been grievously mismanaged on our part.[1] I have had much correspondence with the Duke of Bedford about Lord John and his case, which the Duke says, now that he has heard it all and seen the correspondence, he thinks much better than he had supposed, and that John was meditating the publication of a defence of himself, but could not determine in what shape it should be. I earnestly advised him to dissuade his brother from publishing anything, as he could not make an effectual defence of his conduct without making revelations that would be held unjustifiable and cause all sorts of ill humour and recriminations, and render his position, both personal and political, worse than it now is. Some communications in a friendly spirit have taken place between Lord John and Clarendon, but I can see that there is still existing a great deal of soreness and a not very cordial feeling between them. I have been reading Lord Grey's speech on the war, which he has published in a pamphlet, and I think it excellent and unanswerable. I long to write something on the subject and to add to Grey's argument on other parts of the case. I do not care about the unpopularity of doing so, and am only deterred from taking so much trouble by feeling that it would be unavailing, and that to attempt to make the public listen to reason and take a dispassionate view of the various questions connected with the war on which they have been so completely bamboozled and misled, would be like Mrs. Partington and her mop.